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The last thing I want to talk about is office hours. You can bring any project or any problems, and the consulting Rails experts at Evil Martians can help you out.
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They don't look very busy. One second—there we go, fixed.
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This is convenient, and almost like I planned this segue, because our next speaker is from Evil Martians.
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I've done this before. We promoted this talk from the CFP, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I am sure that this talk will raise questions, provide answers, and energize us for all the work on day two tomorrow.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I am excited to introduce Irina Nazarova!
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What an absolutely mind-blowing and incredible honor it is to be here, giving a keynote at Rails.
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I'm pumped, and it's a pleasure to be part of this keynote sandwich with Nadia. You're on the other side of the sandwich right now, and it's a joy for me to have this chance to take you all—my friends, my future friends—on a little journey.
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Just last year, RailsConf in Atlanta was my very first RailsConf. I met some amazing people, participated in some cool events, and made many new Ruby friends, just like I'm sure you're doing today.
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I received so much support and encouragement, and I wanted to be useful to this community as well. So, hi! My name is Irina, but you can call me AA.
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I'm the CEO of Evil Martians, a consulting company, and a co-founder of Cable, a WebSocket infrastructure company. Oh, and I really like AI-generated images, as you will see.
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I was thinking about something that seems to be missing: we often hear lots of stories about companies from the first wave of Rails popularity—Shopify, GitHub, Intercom, and many others.
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We know about their success, but when we discuss the topic of whether Rails is dead, what we actually want to know is: Are there companies choosing Rails today? Are there new companies choosing Rails or switching to Rails?
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This topic is missing in our conversations, and stories like Nadia’s are super important.
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I believe that startup stories are generally missing from the conversation, and coincidentally, these are precisely the stories that Evil Martians are exposed to.
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We work for startups. We collaborate with startup teams, building features and helping them grow their productivity and businesses.
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We contribute to and witness their success and wanted to share something we already knew about startups on Rails.
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Of course, I wanted to collect more stories, so I picked up the phone. I called some of our clients from Evil Martians.
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Then, I added a few Cable clients, and soon, I reached out to companies and startups I had known about before.
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I continued reaching out to more companies and startups. A few of those are existing products, but the majority are new businesses.
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Finally, I spoke to a few companies that are so early-stage they don't have a logo or name yet.
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Then something unexpected happened: this was supposed to be a yes-saying, simple talk about how there are startups choosing Rails today.
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But during those conversations, I found the other side that made me highly motivated to build.
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And this is how I want you to feel after this talk: I want you to feel that same urgency to build in this community.
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So let's begin! We start in January 2023 in North Carolina.
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Founders Mike, Suzanne, and Joey gathered together. They had built, scaled, and sold their businesses to some big companies.
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They know the ropes. Now, they face a problem and want to solve it together.
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The task at hand is simple: paint a house.
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Tim and Suzanne want to paint their own houses. It sounds simple, right?
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But they want to do it the same way they do everything else: using a mobile application or laptop.
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However, they're not able to do this, and this is when they realize there's a huge market for these services.
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And so, CraftWork is created. CraftWork hires people to paint houses.
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Sounds simple, right? They paint both exterior and interior surfaces, including kitchen cabinets.
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However, CraftWork’s purpose is to make this work as efficient as possible. Consider the scheduling, planning, invoicing, and communication.
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Everything must take place on this platform, and geography also comes into play—houses need locations and people have to go to those locations.
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Now, let me tell you a bit more about the CTO, Mike.
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He had some experience with Rails back in his days at the University of Connecticut, during Rails 2.
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So you can date him, but sorry about that, Mike.
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After that, he worked at Microsoft, .NET, and had some experience with JavaScript.
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He established several startups and even ran a coding school teaching Python.
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Eventually, he went to work for Google.
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Now, there's something interesting about him—he's a fellow podcaster.
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He is one of the hosts of Software Engineering Daily.
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This team had to decide on the tech stack for their product—what do you think they chose?
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They ultimately opted for Rails.
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And what do you think? Of course, it works!
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This small team of founders could build this crazy application.
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It's reminiscent of the story we heard this morning. It’s incredible how quickly you can ship features with Rails.
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Mike shared a similar experience with Yto—a story of switching from Next.js to Rails after a few months.
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Particularly, their CTO, Garant, mentioned the principle of convention over configuration.
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This principle relieved him from the decision-making nightmare of constantly choosing tools and third-party services.
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Here are a few more quotes from different founders: John from Healthy!
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And Dorian from Bglad praised the Rails ecosystem, especially the gems.
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What happens after that? Remember, they started in January 2023.
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By April, they switched to Rails. In the summer, they got accepted into Y Combinator.
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They successfully finished their program and raised a $6 million seed round in November.
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Let's celebrate this success!
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Now this sounds simple, right? They had some experience with Rails. You might say.
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But let me tell you another story that begins a little earlier—back in 2021.
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Can you guess the city? Yes, this is New York.
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The pandemic was quite grim, but during this time three young founders started a company.
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Meet Jack, Steven, and Cameron. They met online in Facebook groups when they were just 15.
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Like many young people, they liked fancy sneakers.
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But unlike many of their peers, they turned their passion into a hustle by building software called sneaker bots.
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This software helps them resell those limited sneakers.
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Now fast forward to their early twenties—they are recent college graduates with some experience.
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Still, they are young and decided to build something bigger: a marketplace for all things digital.
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From crypto to fitness courses to games to software, anything digital, kind of an influencer style.
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This sounds similar to the story of Shopify, if you think about it.
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But nowadays, many of us feel a bit jaded after the decline of the Rails hype cycle.
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However, these three founders bring a new perspective, a fresh view of the world.
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They choose Rails against the odds, and initially, they were skeptical.
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They didn't have experience with Ruby, and neither did their friends.
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Moreover, something I didn't expect: serverless is their new norm.
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What we might call a serverful application is something they've never had experience with.
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The good news is that things that worked on us also work on them.
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Another new Ruby engineer, Kai, reported a similar 'wow' moment.
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Both Jack and Kai had a 'wow' moment watching the same 15-minute Rails blog video.
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What happened next? They got curious.
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Jack later said, 'I obviously fell in love with Rails.' Nothing else could have happened.
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So, they switched to Rails and built this JZ marketplace.
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There's a familiar face here, and I don't know why. You should ask him about this later.
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Marco, where are you? You should ask him!
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Not only Jack but many others are pleased with ActiveRecord, which they consider Rails’ number one superpower.
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The small team was able to deliver every feature their customers requested during the first two years of the product's life.
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Can you imagine anyone else being able to say this outside of Rails? Quite frankly, I cannot.
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So, they powered a sales volume of $322 million on the platform.
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Furthermore, they raised $18 million in funding.
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Now the only question remains: why are more startups not choosing Rails?
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My final story for today also begins in 2021, right here in Boston.
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There are two tech executives, Freedom and Ran, who start a project within their company called Flexcar.
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Freedom is the CTO of Zipcar and starts this long-term car subscription company called Flexcar.
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Flexcar soon splits from Zipcar.
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Regarding car subscription companies, it's complex: it’s a two-sided marketplace.
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It must be incredibly fast, scalable, and support a growing network of users.
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What do you think they chose for their tech stack in 2021?
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Their choice: Java microservices.
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But not just a few; this quickly escalated to over 70 Java microservices.
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The team followed every best practice for building software businesses.
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However, the team soon realized they needed faster delivery and better productivity.
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They were entangled in 70 microservices and over 30 databases.
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Freedom, the CTO, stated, "We need a change."
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Interestingly, Freedom is here with us today.
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In January 2024, Flexcar begins its migration to Rails.
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Just think about it: dozens of engineers, all experienced with Java.
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Switching from 70 microservices to one monolith—and changing from Java to Ruby! That's not simple.
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Yet skeptics quickly fall in love with Rails and the productivity of a monolithic Rails application.
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It’s like a breath of fresh air.
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Flexcar isn’t the only team that shared a similar story.
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Sarah, the founder and CTO of Flow, switched from Java to Rails and felt she was working three times faster.
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The success of Flexcar is happening as we speak, and they’re scheduled for their release to production later tonight!
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I don’t know how you feel, but conducting those 25 conversations was incredibly emotional for me.
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I felt inspired and empowered by everything I learned.
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But I also felt a little anxiety and a sense of responsibility.
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Why? Because all those startups—this is just a subset of hundreds and thousands of startups choosing Rails as we speak.
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They’re not just relying on Rails; they’re relying on the entire Rails ecosystem.
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They need solutions to all the problems they are facing.
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And I realized that CTOs are exceptionally skilled at identifying community solutions.
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It’s a rare skill to find solutions that might be less obvious.
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Our conversations didn’t only touch on the good things but also what’s missing.
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I already knew that startups exist, that they are choosing Rails in recent years.
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But now I want to share with you what I discovered.
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I'm not sharing all the feedback I've received, as it can be situational, personal, or random.
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Instead, I will share the top five most requested things from the CTOs of growing companies.
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Number five is a bit hard to guess, as it’s not technical.
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But it relates to something we had back in 2012-2014 when Rails was the most popular web framework.
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We had overwhelming support, with people discussing Rails and suggesting it.
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However, people choosing Rails today don’t have that, and it's noticeable.
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Daniel, a founder building in the San Francisco Bay area, expressed feelings of loneliness despite knowing dozens of companies working with Rails.
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Now, Ruby conferences are a great resource and there are numerous conferences happening this year.
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I feel there’s a turnaround happening in our community.
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We should take this energy and not take it for granted.
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In our current landscape, at least one conference may end up missing.
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Let’s not only keep local meetups and conferences alive but expand them.
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Even those who don’t attend still appreciate them.
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Number four is technical, and you’re likely expecting me to mention something about AI.
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Several people remarked we don’t need Python any longer; AI is being productized through APIs.
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Ruby is perfect for leveraging those APIs to develop products using those APIs.
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Yet, we are not doing enough in the community regarding AI.
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There are many incredible developments and several SDKs to utilize.
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Now, number three is about integrations.
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Many integrations aren’t being updated properly, which is concerning.
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We need to stay on top of integration updates.
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Furthermore, they need integrations with new technologies.
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We should continuously work on improving and upgrading integrations.
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Getting closer to number two.
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This is something that every person I spoke to was excited about.
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And that’s Rails full-stack with the fantastic advancements with Hotwire.
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But we still have some challenges, especially with the documentation.
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Many comments came in about the lack of documentation for Hotwire.
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We need real-life examples.
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Currently, we have community documentation for Hotwire, and it needs your contributions.
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If you're using Hotwire, please share your experiences and examples.
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We also need UI component libraries.
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Ruby engineers need libraries to work with as they may not be familiar with CSS.
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So, let’s be honest, there are several initiatives.
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Yet, it’s just the beginning. None of those libraries are fully complete.
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They aren’t on par with the React ecosystem, so we need to contribute.
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Finally, there's the challenge of optimistic UI.
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This is quickly becoming the new norm, especially for applications wishing to maintain a competitive edge.
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A typical application waits for the round trip to the server for the action to complete.
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With optimistic UI, it creates an illusion of zero latency.
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If you're utilizing popular applications, you know what I'm talking about.
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But we need to integrate this into Hotwire.
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And there’s already a Hotwire optimistic UI challenge.
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What do you think is number one?
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If Hotwire is number two, then what could possibly be number one?
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Yes! The single most requested thing from CTOs of growing companies.
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Let me lay it out for you. Most of the big companies known to run on Rails are using React.
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Let’s be honest. The new startups aiming to compete with existing businesses also need a competitive edge.
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Yes, Hotwire has streamlined the front-end story, but we still need a reliable way to integrate with React.
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Many companies working on Rails today are inventing their own bicycles.
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There's no standard integration path, so let me outline three scenarios.
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One is GraphQL, but the tooling for subscriptions is far from perfect.
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The second is REST API integration.
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We’re trying to build something here at Evil Martians but it's not quite there yet.
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Finally, not every setup needs an API.
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The simplest way for a startup to use React is to drop a component into a view.
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But ensuring type safety and a consistent developer experience remains a hurdle.
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This is why we need to work together to find a seamless integration process.
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Now you may be wondering—so much work for the Rails core team?
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Indeed, we have five core team members here today; let’s give them a round of applause.
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They do a lot of unglamorous work in addition to new initiatives.
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We must appreciate this.
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However, the tasks I mentioned aren’t just meant for the core team to build.
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That's never been the plan; Rails integrates with various ecosystem solutions.
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The world of applications built on Rails is vast and complex.
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There cannot be one solution for all; we need diverse solutions from both inside and outside the core.
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If you’re not convinced, keep this in mind: many CTOs told me they prefer community-built solutions.
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Why? Because they often find solutions that cater to fast-growing enterprises.
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The future of those startups and new companies relies on all of us.
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I've noticed that my friends in the community sometimes feel the need for validation.
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They feel that without someone's blessing, they can't move forward.
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I want to tell you: recognize those thoughts and rebel against them.
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The only person stopping you is yourself.
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We are a mature community that has weathered a lot.
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People of all ages are choosing Rails today not because of hype, but because it enables them to build as fast as possible.
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There's nothing better for them out there.
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This signifies that Rails has real value. The ecosystem has genuine worth.
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It’s time for us to move confidently forward to recognize the importance of the core and ecosystem.
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This is an indicator of a mature ecosystem.
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Now is the perfect moment to build in this community.
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And yes, earn money while doing it!
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Please do build educational courses, software, consulting, and start local meetups.
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Use open-source as marketing.
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There are countless ways to be commercially successful while building for this community.
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If you think I’m being theoretical, rest assured I am very practical.
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Tomorrow is the big day! When I say build, I mean tomorrow.
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We’re going to have maintainers of open source present.
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Bring them your feedback, your success stories, and share!
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If you're using open source effectively, let the maintainers know.
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They often only receive negative feedback or issues.
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Let’s also contribute, upgrade libraries, and build new integrations.
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Let’s use tomorrow for all of this.
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And whatever you do, don’t be shy about building with Rails!
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I’m practicing what I preach here by not being shy.
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I'm sharing a page where we list all the open source dependencies and recommendations.
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This is our first version, but we will keep our source updated.
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This is different from our blog posts, which you probably know about.
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So be sure to check this out!
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On that note, thank you all for being here.
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Thank you, and please support Ukraine!